Hugging a person who you desperately want to hug you back and not getting any response is the worst feeling in the world.

It might almost have been better if Stan had pushed him away, but as is Ford is hugging his brother for the first time in over forty years and Stan just doesn’t move. Doesn’t react. It must be like hugging a statue.

And we know that by the time they get back to the Shack that Ford doesn’t have any hope that they can fix it. Not that he would have had much to begin with, but I think there must have been a glimmer, and I think it died when he was kneeling there crying into Stan’s shoulder, holding on for dear life and wishing with everything he had that Stan would return the hug. Just raise one arm. Just lean into it a little.

“REPRESENT GAY TAXPAYERS NOW!” – “I’M GAY” – “OUT OF THE CLOSET AND INTO THE STREET,” Minnesota State Senator Allan Spear (June 24, 1937 - October 11, 2008) addresses a gay rights rally, St. Paul, Minnesota, c. 1981. Photo c/o BoxTurtleBulletin.com.
On December 9, 1974, forty-two years ago today, Allan Spear, a first-term state senator from Minneapolis, Minnesota, came out, making him the first openly gay man to hold state office in the United States.
First elected in 1972, Spear said later he came out after feeling “lousy” for staying silent about his sexuality during a debate over an anti-discrimination bill. “I wanted to stop the tittering,” he said at the time. “There’s nothing I’m ashamed of. Nobody should have to talk about it on back stairways…[I want to speak] as a gay person on gay rights issues.”
After coming out, Spear acknowledged that it likely would be more difficult to get re-elected, but “added that his district was ‘pretty sophisticated.’” Spears was re-elected many times, serving a total of twenty-eight years in the state senate, including eight as the President of the Senate.
Allan Spears retired in 2000; he died at the age of seventy-one on October 11, 2008. He was survived by his long-time partner, Junjiro Tsuji. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #AllanSpear (at Saint Paul, Minnesota)

It’s five forty-five on Christmas Eve and Chloe has never been more in love than she is at that exact moment. Standing in the archway of the living room, fireplace crackling pleasantly and the glow from the tree lights twinkling in her periphery.

She’d heard Beca singing as she descended the stairs, after emerging from the bath that the brunette had run for her and blowing out all sixteen of the candles that had been lit - Chloe had counted them, then been elated by the skewed reference.

“Let your heart be light. From now on, our troubles will be out of sight.” Beca’s voice reminds her of a chorus of angels. But she knows better than to tell her that. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the Yuletide gay. From now on, our troubles will be miles away.” Beca would give her that patented eye roll and sardonic smirk, and call Chloe cheesy. “Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more.” And not really believe a word of it. “Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow.”

But Chloe means it.

Means every good thing she ever says, ever thinks about Beca with every fibre of her being.

“Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”

Leaning against that archway, watching Beca stand there bathed in the light of the fireplace, swaying from side to side as she softly sings to their little, newborn bundle of joy in her arms, she’s never loved Beca more.

Did you know that Mary actually did know her child would save the world? In fact, she was saved around forty-seven years before Jesus died. Fr. Mike Schmitz simplifies the complex theology behind the Immaculate Conception in this video. He demonstrates how Scripture alludes to the fact that Mary was immaculately conceived, and he explains why this solemnity is so important to the Church.

fighting off the darkness with your ever shining lightyou’re a knight in shining armor, but i still get such a frightwhen you leave, and without out notice, you are no longer nearbecause it’s true, I’ll tell you, i feel much safer when you’re here

I’m 26 fucking years old and I feel like I arrived WAY LATE to the transgender game gdi. Sure sure we hear stories of folks in their forties, fifties, sixties coming out or transitioning, but y’all KNOW the narrative that gets told, the one that gets attention is the “i knew since I was born” story. The older folks transitioning is often framed around this, around knowing ones whole life but never doing anything about it, and sure, you get those nice positive posts on here about not knowing till your older and having no signs till your older, but that’s not the stories that get Huff post articles and trans documentaries. It doesn’t fit the marketable ideal. Also, for trans boys, there’s no running away from the narrative of the tomboy. You had to be into sports, you had to want short hair, never wear girls clothes, hunt, wrestle, be tough. There’s usually no room for femininity in the childhoods of trans boys and that is hurtful both for the community and on a personal level cause God I was never a tomboy. Yeah I chopped my hair off super short when I was 6, but it was 1996 and half the girls in my class had bowl cuts or mushroom cuts or pixie cuts; there was no masculine drive to it. I lived on a farm and loved playing outside, but I wanted to do it in dresses an wearing nail polish. It wasn’t till I was 11 (july 28 2001 to be exact, according to Wikipedias info on when Yue first aired in an American Cardcaptors dub episode) that Anything happened in my brain to look back on years later and go oh, that was A Trans Thing.

I don’t know if it’s because I was so late in the game, so femme, if my first inclines were correct and i’m not binary trans or what it is, but 4 years since i had my first thoughts of “could /I/ be trans?” and I still find it hard to actually call myself that. I still feel fake, I still feel like even if I’m trans i’m not the kind that COUNTS, I’m not what a trans person SHOULD be. Keep in mind I’m going on 2 months on hormones now, I’ve been binding for almost 2 years, I pack, I desire a more masculine body, but I still feel like ‘i don’t count’ and don’t even talk to me about writing/drawing/seeing prexisting characters as trans. All those blogs for headcanon trans characters and trans boys I’ve always been like, how? How can you do that? How could i look at a character and go ‘he’s like me’ without feeling like a selfish asshole stealing my friends favorite characters and forcing them into a mold just so they can be like me? I’m undesirable, i’m not pretty, it seems like such stupid 2005 era self-inset Mary Sues on Fanfiction.net shit to say a character is trans. Besides, to me, saying a character is like me has always been a number 1 way to feel like SHIT since those characters never end up being characters my friends like.

SO THEN THIS MOTHERFUCKER BALLET-SPIN KICKS HIS WAY INTO MY LIFE. I’d already seen him on my dash and knew YUP, he’s gonna be my fav, but my GOD did I not understand how much. He just. He’s perfect and I adore the hell out of him, and after a couple eps I was like you know…He…kinda reminds me of me. I too am an angry little sonofabitch driven by spite and a need to destroy my competition, I also look at who beat me in a contest (im an artist) and find nothing but their flaws. I was raised by a grandparent in leiu of a mother. I just really clicked with this brat and so there was this tiny part of me that said hey, he doesn’t show his chest…he’s beautiful…everyone refers to him in feminne terms…so I thought ok maybe he’s trans. It could happen.

Then I log onto tumblr, and find a couple others with this idea…but then also a lot of people in the comments of posts being little assholes just trying to find flaws in the logic of people giving trans headcanons. Which is a douche move guys when someone wants to see a character as LGBT your job isn’t to prove them wrong fucking christ all that did was remind me oh yeah, that’s dumb and selfish>

But, then i drug my fiance into this, and my girlfriend, my fiance’s boyfriend, friend of mine in Scotland. So many people, several of whom agreed yeah, this could be a trans kid, and I thought again, ok maybe he could be. And then I got ballsy as fuck and thought, and maybe HE didn’t know from the fucking start. Maybe he was 9 or 10 or 11. Maybe that flashback where he looks 12, TOPS, was right after he started saying no, call me a boy, call me Yuri. Maybe he LIKES keeping his hair long and shaggy even if some of his rink mates or whoever still say ‘she doesn’t look like a boy’ for it. Maybe he has a drawer of cheetah print sports bras selected carefully for flatness factor and least amount of seams shown under his clothes. Maybe he doesn’t wanna be called a prima ballerina, but doesn’t mind the beauty and grace he’s learning through it.

It’s always been hard for me to accept myself as a boy even though i /want/ to be one more than anything. i look at myself and say boys can’t have boobs and boys can’t have periods but here’s the thing; since I was 15, WAY before I knew what trans was or nonbinary or even intersex, I had OC’s who were third gender, who lived in a world with more than two reproductive sexes, who were feminine boys. THOSE were the characters I lived through, people who had vaginas and a uterus and wore dresses but were 100% seen as male by society, not a damn question asked. I never identified with or through women, but I was never hyper masculine either. THis is just the first time i’ve looked at someone ELSE’S character, a POPULAr character and said yeah, that boy has a vagina and wears bras and maybe i don’t gotta bind every day when it hurts. And it’s been a really great feeling, especially, to see that other folks think the same way.

St. Paisios, who died in 1994, frequently waxed rather eloquent on the evils of modern food production, shoddy manufacturing, and the inanity of much of what passes for technological progress:

On modern hen-houses with their mandatory daylight - “What is wrong with us? We believe that we will correct God with our inventions. We turn night into day so that those poor hens will lay eggs all the time! And have you seen those eggs? If God had done that to us and made the moon shine like the sun, people would have gone mad. God created the night so that we might get rest. And look what we do!”

On the treatment of farm animals in general: “They have destroyed the animals too - chickens, cattle, they are all affected. They use hormones to make a forty-day old animal appear six months old. Can anyone who eats this meat benefit from it? They give hormones to cows and they produce more milk than farmers can distribute to market. As a result, the prices fall, producers go on strike, and they pour out milk upon the streets.”

On television - “Someone came and told me "Television is good Father!” “Eggs are good too” I replied “but if you blend them with chicken droppings they become useless as well.”

On modern technological civilization - “What have we achieved in this century with our ‘civilization’? We have driven people mad and have polluted the atmosphere and the environment. When the wheel leaves its axis it spins aimlessly out of control. In the past people suffered from wars. Now they suffer from civilization.”

Here are a couple of quick points from the Executive Summary that largely confirm previous studies, but if you’re looking for a quick reference these are very helpful and effectively illustrate the challenges trans folks face daily.

Only 11% of respondents reported that all of their IDs had the name and gender they preferred, while more than two-thirds (68%) reported that none of their IDs had the name and gender they preferred.

One in four (25%) respondents experienced a problem in the past year with their insurance related to being transgender, such as being denied coverage for care related to gender transition or being denied coverage for routine care because they were transgender.

Forty percent (40%) have attempted suicide in their lifetime, nearly nine times the rate in the U.S. population (4.6%).
Seven percent (7%) attempted suicide in the past year—nearly twelve times the rate in the U.S. population (0.6%).

Fifty-four percent (54%) of those who were out or perceived as transgender in K–12 were verbally harassed, nearly one-quarter (24%) were physically attacked, and 13% were sexually assaulted in K–12 because of being transgender.

The unemployment rate among respondents (15%) was three times higher than the unemployment rate in the U.S. population (5%), with Middle Eastern, American Indian, multiracial, Latino/a, and Black respondents experiencing higher rates of unemployment.

Nearly one-quarter (23%) of respondents experienced some form of housing discrimination in the past year, such as being evicted from their home or denied a home or apartment because of being transgender.

In the past year, of respondents who interacted with police or law enforcement officers who thought or knew they were transgender, more than half (58%) experienced some form of mistreatment.

Nearly half(46%) of respondents were verbally harassed in the past year because of being transgender. Nearly one in ten (9%) respondents were physically attacked in the past year because of being transgender.

The Keeper woman was angry. Absolutely furious. Who did this man think he was? How dare he make her apologise to him! She was merely doing her job and running the Tea House when he showed up. That White Lion had entered her territory and made a fool of her whilst she was working.

When those words came out of her boss, the teenage plum haired Miqo'te who had everything that Paws didn’t. The girl who was so beautiful and was adored by all she met. Paws couldn’t stand the fact that Teirra was so young, naive and child-like in her ways. She despised the new mother, but she was only here because her favourite Rug Skink had asked her to watch over the girl before she passed away.

Tobi had done so much for the forty and seven summers old woman. The Raen had saved her from slavery and released her. Paws owed Tobi a huge debt for this, and this was it: to keep watch over Teirra and her kits in place of Tobi. Tobi had known she was going to lose her life when going after her wife Roka which is why the Keeper was stationed there.

Paws had no problem doing this for Tobi at first. But over time, she had come to grow jealous of the young plum haired Halfbreed. “I’s fuckin’ ‘ate her. I’s don’ understan’ 'ow she fuckin’ gets everythin’ on a platter, I’s 'ad ta werk 'ard all m'life ta get where I’s am t'day."

First, she had seen Teirra with that beautiful redhead Seeker woman who was constantly giggling, smiling and affectionate with her. Secondly, it was the one-eyed criminal who had her boss calling his name all night long. Then she had seen that dark, skinned Hyur man with the long hair and glasses visit her whose groin Paws couldn’t stop staring at.

Finally, that man… that tall, muscular built Hyur who had entered. Was he Garlean? Paws didn’t know. But, two suns before that Teirra had asked the old woman to deliver a letter to him. She didn’t ask the teenage girl what it was about but she assumed it was serious.

The envelope had been addressed to a man named Rev, and she assumed that this mysterious figure was the White Lion who had entered the property. He had put the old woman against the wall after she tried to 'deal with him’ and remove him from 'her business’. Paws had been trying to secure a smuggling deal that day which was ruined by that man’s actions. He had scared away her potential business partners and she was livid. And now she was expected to apologise? How dare he!

Paws sat down at her desk, it was early in the day and it was before the Tea House was due to open. She had another smuggling deal she wanted to pull off. Since she had gotten to work for the Carpeted Kettle she made use of using the business as a cover for her own shady career.

Stay th'fuck away from th'tea house or m'pal Elvis will fuckin’ kill ya.

Ya twat!

P.s. I’s ‘ope yer enjoy tha’ swivin’ gift I’s left ya x x x x

Paws had kindly personally delivered the letter to the apartment she had dropped off Teirra’s envelope the day before and she had enclosed a lovely package of chocobo dung which she had set alight with fireworks. If the White Lion was in, he would have heard devious cackles like an old witch as the Keeper put her ‘present’ in his letterbox.

Disclaimer:
I know perfectly well that Luke isn’t this petty, but just bear with me for a
bit!

Kylo Ren
looked down at the empty, crumpled robes at his feet. The scavenger girl might
have escaped, but Skywalker at least was down. The old man put up a good fight,
obviously trying to buy time for his new apprentice but in the end he couldn’t
stand his ground.

Ren triumphantly
kicked the now disembodied metallic hand into a corner and turned to go hunt
down the girl…

Luke
Skywalker was standing in front of him, transparent, blue, and looking a good forty
years younger than when Kylo cut him down, fingers steeped, head cocked to the
side, dangerously calm.

‘If you are
trying to scare me, you are doing a very poor job’ Kylo glowered.

Luke said
nothing. The corner of his lips twitched up in a tiny smile. Kylo fought the
urge to back up.

‘You are
dead. You have no power over me, you can’t even touch me!’

Luke
remained silent. He didn’t even move – but his face and clothing started to
change, shifting until he was his nineteen year old self again, fresh from Tatooine,
complete with poncho and an awful, bucket shaped hat.

i never get people who say “AFI doesn’t have any energy anymore” when the guys are like forty. davey can still practically do the splits in midair, he DOVE INTO THE CROWD DOING A FRONT FLIP last tour… hunter is always jumping up and down like crazy, spinning off the side of the drums, i never saw him stand still last tour. so stop your nonsense.

a+ maev you well know the same things annoy tf out of me too. ITS ABSURD.

And it is a freaking constant in front and behind the cameras. You see the casting for some movies and shows and you get a woman that is at her mid twenties AT BEST acting next to a man that is at his late thirties or early forties (and that is me being generous here) and they present them as the “logical” age difference that is the basic concept of the female presentation in the media.

Like you even get the media comparing a 60 year old woman with a 74 year old man and say that
hey.. finally a progressive movie that gives a similarly/same aged couple on screen (yes star wars I am so
looking at you!)…and I am like ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW? You want a couple of the same age? Get a man and a woman that HAVE THE SAME AGE. It is THAT simple!

And on the other hand women are not allowed to age at all even in shows and movies that even do a time jump and show the same actors portraying their older characters. Women do not get grey hair, they do not age, the don’t get wrinkles, they do not gain weight, they are always pretty and have perfect make-up on, they go to sleep and wake up flawless with shiny brushed hair and their make-up on. Everything in their appearance is effortless and flawless. It is a fashion statement. We get dystropian and gore genre and the women are always pretty and even the “dirt” they use on them is an artistic statement of beauty. You see different eras and situations where it makes no sense and women are always shaved and sparkly clean and have the lip gloss on and they never menstruate. We get superhero genre and the men wear clothes that make sense and women are dressed so to be sexually appealing, cleavage and all. And the list extends to every genre really.

And in the Vikings for example it is so RIDICULOUS especially when you put the female characters in comparison with the male ones. The transformation of the male characters is amazing and so on point and yet the women of the show are pretty much the same as they were in their first appearance when they are meant to be 30 years older in a difficult age with harsh winters and no modern medicine and hardships and war and not the same utilities to help them survive.

Like…GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK!

How about you use mannequins instead of living breathing women instead if you are not planning to treat women like humans in the first place?

Why is it such a crime to portray women like human beings on tv? And then everyone acts so surprised when women and impressionable teens get so obsessed with their appearance and go to extreme lengths in order to get something they will never get…the perfect image of beauty as it is promoted in the media (shows, magazines, movies, all things photoshopped). You see people committing suicide and becoming anorexic or depressed because they are struggling to mimic those models of “beauty” (which in reality are not even beautiful at all if you ask me) and when women in the media DARE to age humbly and NORMALLY people drag them by saying “oh boy she did not age well!”..

Day Three Hundred Forty-Four: Favorite Grass Type - Grovyle

In my youth, before I was awakened to the sanctity of all life, I spent a winter trapping mink and fox in the Alaskan bush. My Aunt and Uncle homesteaded in the 1960s and now ran a hunting camp. Since I was Cheechako, a city kid, and not qualified as a guide I was given the job of manning a trapline. The trapline was set along a creek some forty miles by air from the main camp. There was a small “cabin” with a wood stove and a 55 gallon barrel of gasoline with a hand cranked pump used to fill the tank of the snow machine.

I was riding the trapline with my dog ‘mede running alongside the snow machine. I came around a bend and saw a wolf pack tearing apart my catch. Now generally wolves don’t attack hunters but this was a particularly cold winter and food was damned scarce. I guess they were pissed at my interrupting their feed. Two of the wolves rushed me and I panicked.

Yep, panicked at the worst possible time. I fell off the snow machine into a snow bank. My rifle was still in its holster on the now overturned machine. Then without a thought ‘mede just jumped in the middle of that pack. Bravest damn thing I have ever seen. I got up, fumbled for a bit and dug my rifle out. I let off a wild shot and winged one of the wolves and they all bolted. Snarling at me as if to say “you got lucky this time human”.

Old ‘mede was more or less fine. He was chewed up a bit and had his ear torn but it was nothing a week of rest and a few salmon wouldn’t fix. That dog wasn’t afraid of anything. He would have charged Satan himself had the old bastard been man enough to show himself. I didn’t know it then but this was only the first of two times ole ‘Mede was going to save me that winter. Two ravens like a couple of old Indian men settled on a scrub spruce and laughed at me as if this was the funniest thing they had ever seen. As for me … well let’s just say I didn’t stop shakin’ until I was back in the cabin zipped into my mummy bag with two shots of Jack Daniels in me.